16 
CONDOR. 
*S*B 
The skin which covers the head is uniformly blackish, like the 
plumage, in which there is only a little cinereous on the wings : 
in this sex the wing-coverts, which in the male are white at tip 
from the middle, are of a blackish gray. This circumstance is 
very conclusive, inasmuch as the white forms a very conspicuous 
mark on the wings of the male, which has occasioned it to be 
said that some Condors had a white back. 
For several months during the early part of their life, the young 
are covered with very soft whitish down, curled, and resembling 
that of young owls : this down is so loose as to make the bird 
appear a large shapeless mass. Even at two years old the Condor 
is by no means black, but of an obscure fulvous brown, and both 
sexes are then destitute of the white collar. 
The following description and admeasurements are from a pair 
of young living birds, said to be nine months old, caught on the 
Peruvian Andes. One of these (which are precisely alike,) was 
captured by an Indian, who discovering two in the nest, ran up at 
great speed, fearing to be overtaken by the old ones, and 
succeeded in securing it by putting it in his pocket, not larger 
than a full grown chicken. I have carefully compared this with, 
and found perfectly similar to it, a bill and a quill-feather brought 
from the Columbia River by Lewis and Clark and preserved in 
the Philadelphia Museum. These remains prove the existence of 
the Condor within the United States, and sufficiently authorize 
its introduction into this work. 
Length three feet nine inches. Breadth nine feet. Bill to the 
corner of the mouth two inches six-eighths; to the cere one inch 
and a half, to the down three and a quarter inches. Bill curved 
and hooked, with several flexures; upper mandible passing over 
the lower, which is rounded and scalloped: nostrils pervious, 
rounded-elliptical, cut in the cere. Bill outside, cere, and all the 
surrounding naked parts black ; ears without any covering, the 
